NEW BEDFORD — When Manuel Sequeira stepped up to the podium in 2006 to read at his first Frederick Douglass Read-athon, he was nervous, shaking and had practiced a lot.

"I was only seven," recalled the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School freshman, now 14. "I didn't know what to expect. I thought I was going to mess up."

Sequeira, who was born in Portugal and was introduced to the reading through a program at the Harbour House Family Shelter, has come a long way since then.

And that, he said, is precisely the point.

"Frederick Douglass is like a motivator," he said, adding that those at the reading have the opportunity to "remember what he went through and what he accomplished and then look back at today."

On Sunday, Sequeira will participate in his eighth reading of "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," which recounts Douglass' childhood as a slave in Maryland and his eventual escape to freedom in New Bedford.

This is the 13th year the New Bedford Historical Society has hosted the event, which will start at 2 p.m. at the Friends Meeting House at 83 Spring St.

"In Douglass' narrative, he talks so much about the power of education and the power of literacy," said Historical Society President Lee Blake. "We wanted that message to get out to young people."

About 40 people are scheduled to read, said coordinator Laurie Robertson-Lorant. Blake said about 300 people typically attend.

The New Bedford Historical Society has also lobbied with the NAACP to include Douglass' narrative, in which he describes learning to read as "the pathway from slavery to freedom" as part of the seventh or eighth grade curricula, Blake said.

Sequeira will be reading from the second chapter, and rooting for 7-year-old brother Justin Andrade — "a really good reader," Sequeira said — who is participating for the first time.